It's More Than Just Lifing Weights & Building Muscle

If ever you've researched on the internet or in magazines the different workout routines promising you the path to muscle building at the fastest rate possible, no doubt you've noticed that one particular theme or factor seems to be given the most amount of focus.....that when it comes to building muscle mass you must lift heavier and heavier weights, in a progressive manner (usually at every workout for that muscle).

Well, why is that almost none of these workout programs seem to deliver on their promises?

Or better yet, why is that many of these weight training routines seem to work at first, initially, yet after a couple of weeks any muscle gaining seems to severely slow down or come to a major stop?

Most will have you believe that it's because either you began to "overtrain", that you weren't eating enough protein, or that your muscle became "accustomed" to the routine.

Actually, some of those are pretty good reasons, except that neither of them may truly be the reason for this. You see, when it comes to muscle building, as opposed to what most others seem to think, it's not just about lifting heavier and heavier weight. There are so many other factors that have just as an important of a role in mass gaining than anything else (talking strictly training right now).

Lifting heavy weights in a progressive manner does indeed help cover one of the muscle building factors, but it drastically neglects the others. Lifting heavier weights may in fact cause the muscle to have to recruit more motor units....which in turn will "train" the nervous system to be better prepared to send signals from the working muscle to the brain telling it to lift.

However, this is mainly important for those focusing on increasing strength or athletic ability...not muscle building. (There's a big difference between what a muscle can "do" and how it "looks", and training it to "do" something is very different than training it "look" a certain way).

(Please read that last paragraph as many times as it takes to realize how important all of this is in the muscle building equation).

Sure, as you lift heavier and heavier weights, especially in single digit or very low double digit rep ranges, may allow you to get stronger, you are still leaving untrained the other muscle building factors.

That's why you have many that are strong as a bull, yet when in a tank top or shirtless don't look like they've ever touched a weight....because they are only covering one of the several muscle building factors.

I'll be covering this topic more in depth in the next article.